


fight so dirty but your love so sweet (talk so pretty but your heart got teeth)

by loudamy



Series: alternate universe [3]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Criminal AU, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-27 11:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20407324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loudamy/pseuds/loudamy
Summary: (For weeks now, his plans have been scuppered at every turn by some joker. She doesn’t quite match his propensity for cool escapes and nifty shooting patterns, but seems to be a dab-hand at cracking codes. He’d be impressed if he wasn’t so disgruntled at his thunder being stolen.)orJake, a criminal vigilante, and Amy, a notorious art thief, make a bet to determine who gets free reign over Brooklyn. Unfortunately, neither of them bet on falling in love instead.





	fight so dirty but your love so sweet (talk so pretty but your heart got teeth)

**Author's Note:**

> fic title is from 'teeth' by 5sos
> 
> i like tropes

‘It’s prime time for crime…!’

His words bleed into the low whistle of the wind on the rooftop, but he cracks a devilish grin anyway as he yanks his beret lower down his brow.

_Cool catchphrase: activated._

This is a prize Jake’s been chasing for nearly two years now; barely a drop in the ocean of his ten years as a hardened career criminal-slash-vigilante (see: amateur thief), but this operation – should he pull it off – will be his tour de force. His crowning glory. His pot of gold-

A sudden patter of light footfalls startles him, but when he peers over the edge of the roof, he’s met with only darkness.

_Probably just an animal, _he decides, and refocuses his attention on the matter at hand.

‘Scaling a building, this is literally the coolest thing I’ve ever done,’ he says gleefully, lamenting for only a moment that nobody will ever actually _see _it.

Jake allows himself to revel in the innate awesomeness of what he’s about to do for about three seconds – somewhere, John McClane is _quivering_ – and then checks his belt.

The cable is tightly secured to his torso, the rope heavy and coarse against his hand, and there are definitely no bars on the windows – he’s checked. He takes a sharp breath, leans back, and careens off of the rooftop.

Cold air ripples against his back, but he’s doing it, he’s actually doing it (‘yippee-kay-yay!’) and he swings forward in a clumsy arc to rest his feet against the windowsill.

He’s primed at the bedroom window of none other than The Vulture.

Jake doesn’t exactly operate on the right side of the law, as such, and he’ll readily admit that, but there’s a – perhaps distorted – morality to his misdeeds. You won’t find him robbing the ordinary civilian enjoying a quiet Saturday night, nor exchanging wads of dirty money in a back alley for a gram of this that and the other.

Rather, he likes to think of himself as a modern-day, badass Robin Hood. Except he goes by ‘Johnny’, and instead of robbing the rich to feed the poor, he steals from those the justice system have failed to keep at bay. People immunised by a veneer of wealth and power, people like Keith Pembroke – a.k.a. The Vulture, a crooked entrepreneur masquerading as a community pillar, whose rap-sheet includes sexual assault, corruption, and bribery, to name a few.

Jake’s not _blaming _the cops, exactly, he knows it’s not as straightforward as building an airtight case and arresting the son-of-a-bitch at hand, but it’s frustrating, when he meanders past a newspaper stand and sees yet another local column singing Pembroke’s praises as another harassment charge is gently decomposed in court.

So what better retribution – other than prison, obviously – than stealing The Vulture’s most prized art collection?

It’s funny, Jake thinks, as he sets to work on the window with a pistol-grip glass cutter, that an uncultured swine would be so renowned for an impressive menagerie of artwork, but then again, it’s a pretty nice way to invest all of that blood money.

He clambers through the window, not above a fist-pump when only two shards of glass get stuck in his arm, and instantly makes an exaggerated gagging noise.

Of _course _The Vulture’s bedroom is a veritable sex dungeon. It’s a garish amalgam of animal prints, faux-fur rugs and towering candles.

‘Gross,’ he mutters, prodding a tiger-head throw with his toe as he picks his way across the room.

There’s no time to waste; Jake’s done his recon, he knows The Vulture keeps his near-priceless art locked away in a vault behind a particularly ostentatious oil painting of himself in his living room, knows that he’s away on a ‘business trip’ (banging his brother’s wife) for the next four days, and most importantly – knows that this is his only shot.

He slides down the ornate spiral banister (‘…wicked!’), slides across the polished floor of the hallway, and moves towards the fireplace, above which the painting hangs. Pembroke’s beady eyes rove his face, and Jake adjusts his mask with slight discomfort.

‘Commence Operation Keep Calm and _Carrion_,’ he says with a maniacal grin, because _smort_, and that’s when the floor creaks ominously behind him and he starts to re-evaluate every single one of his life choices (he should have told his mother he loves her more) –

‘How about “time to commit a _feather-all_ offence?’

Jake freezes, his fingers twitching imperceptibly at the gun holster on his hip. He knows that voice, the smooth tone undercut with the tiniest rasp. It’s the kind of smug that’s only delivered with the element of surprise, and in his mind’s eye appears her perfectly shaped eyebrows angled in that self-satisfied manner, her hands delicately poised on her hips.

There’s one of two ways this could go; he really, _really _wants to be annoyed, make some sort of abrasive comment, but he’s also dying to shoot down that truly terrible (and nerdy) wordplay.

And as usual, his need to taunt her wins out; he relaxes, turns, and says, ‘Ugh. Too wordy. This is clearly a situation for “fowl play”.’

x

For weeks now, his plans have been scuppered at every turn by some joker. She doesn’t quite match his propensity for cool escapes and nifty shooting patterns, but seems to be a dab-hand at cracking codes.

She beat him to the Butt-Face Mugger (Jake didn’t even coin that one) last week, narrowly trounced him in the race to get the ‘Taxi’ dealer who’d been selling exclusively to kids the month before that, and nearly a year ago she single-handedly dropped the Fulton Street Flasher right into the cops’ lap. (‘C’mon, he was ninety-six!’ ‘You weren’t the one who had to drag him eight blocks whilst avoiding getting flashed, Johnny.’)

Of course, Jake’s had his fair share of victories; he snatched the Oolong Slayer from right under her little button nose, and if you’re counting (which he is) he’s pulled off more heists than she has in the past twelve months.

He likes to rib her; she likes to poke at him, but one thing is crystal clear in Jake’s mind: Brooklyn just isn’t big enough for the both of them.

That said, he’d be impressed if he wasn’t so disgruntled at his thunder being stolen.

But right now, standing with his mouth stupidly agape, staring at the slight figure before him – in her trademark black pantsuit – his momentary joy at goading her is rapidly dissipating, because this is his heist and nobody, especially not his rival, is getting in his way.

‘I don’t know what you’re doing here, _Dora_,’ Jake folds his arms and sets her with as menacing a glare as he can manage (it’s hard when you don’t know _who _you’re looking at), ‘but I very clearly got here first. No take-backs.’

‘You don’t even know what you’re stealing!’ she jabs an accusatory finger at him, her eyes widening to a cartoonish circumference.

‘Duh,’ Jake gestures to his beret, scarf and hipster cardigan. ‘Art?’

Dora rolls her eyes; they’re pretty much the only part of her he can discern behind all that black, but he’s momentarily stymied by their impossible darkness, inky in the dimly lit room.

He can’t help but wonder how they’d look under the glare of the sun; like clear onyx, he suspects, like the glint of freshly cut earth.

It’s that voice that brings him back to the present: ‘You’re lucky I showed up, Johnny, because you’re about to trigger about three alarms that will alert Pembroke to our presence and ruin the plan I’ve been working on for a year and a half.’

She dangles the binder that’s perpetually tucked under her arm in his face, as though being a gigantic nerd is something to be proud of. Jake scoffs.

‘Alarm? We’re not stealing Mona Lisa, it’s just a matter of cracking into the safe and-’

‘Actually, the Mona Lisa _was_ stolen in 1911 by Vincenzo Peruggia, in what many academics consider the greatest art theft of the twentieth century.’ she says smoothly, easing past Jake whilst clutching a keypad with a bunch of spidery wires jutting out of it. ‘Personally, I think the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum heist was more impressive, but that’s-’

‘Not interesting at all?’ Jake suggests.

She turns from inspecting the ugly portrait to flash him a searing glare, but Jake, the many-time recipient of this particular Dora ‘Look’, is unfazed.

‘Why are you still here? It’s not like you know how to crack open a safe anyway.’ Dora says, eyes narrowed.

‘Yeah, well I can shoot better than you can.’ Jake wrestles his gun from its holster, spins around, and moments later, there are two smoking cavities where Pembroke’s eyes used to be.

‘Now that’s what I call a bulls-_eye_,’ Jake cackles, but when he turns to face Dora she’s not swooning in admiration of his excellent pun, but caught in the middle of an eye-roll.

‘You realise you just destroyed a piece of art commissioned for over ten thousand dollars, right? For no good reason at all.’

‘Yeah, but who in their right mind is gonna buy a giant painting with _that _face on it? My point still stands, I can shoot better than you.’ Jake knows he’s being petulant at this point, but he can’t help it, she _irks _him, has this inexplicable way of getting under his skin.

‘Well, since you’ve rendered that portrait worthless and probably notified every guard within a ten block radius of our presence, maybe I should get on with opening the vault?’ Dora begins shifting the ruined picture aside.

‘Hey, let me, don’t you have to get back to your cats? I hate to think of them being all lonely for no reason since _I’m _taking whatever art is in that vault home.’

‘I don’t have cats, I live alone-’

‘Cool brag,’ Jake says, lips curling into a toothy smile.

‘And you’re sorely mistaken if you think that-’ she stops abruptly, and he’s sure she’s paled under her mask. ‘Don’t move.’

‘Aw, but-’

‘Don’t. Move.’ she says, more forcefully than before, and it’s only because she sounds genuinely worried that he’s persuaded into freezing like that famous Italian statue or something (look – art just isn’t his thing, okay?).

‘Those are motion sensors.’ Dora makes a slow, tentative gesture to the ceiling behind him. ‘Their lights just came on; they must be on automatic timers. If we move now, they’ll go off and we’ll be done for.’

‘So what, we’re supposed to just stand here until they switch off?’ says Jake incredulously. ‘That could take hours. And I get snacky.’

‘If I can just get to the control panel, I’ll be able to generate a code to turn them off.’ Dora grits her teeth, hand fisting at her slacks.

‘Boring, watch and learn.’ Jake grins, and in one fluid – and he hopes, suave – motion he pulls his gun from the holster, wheels around on one heel and shoots both sensors squarely in the centre. There’s a pitiful, distorted beep and both lights blinker out.

‘See? No need for any of that nerdy stuff.’

‘Yeah,’ Dora nods, and he stands a little straighter, still grinning, ‘so cool, Johnny. Except for the part where you forgot about _those _motion sensors.’

She points backwards, eyes never leaving his face, and Jake’s gut lurches, because there are four more blinking devices above the portrait and as if on cue, they all start shrieking.

‘Abort mission,’ Jake shouts.

Dora’s already halfway to the door, and he catches sight of a slick black ponytail before she bobs out of sight.

‘Hey! Stop right there!’

_Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit, _he didn’t know Pembroke had security guards, but that’s a fact Jake is becoming uncomfortably acquainted with because a large, obscenely-muscled man and a woman with unruly curls and a fearsome expression are suddenly barrelling towards him.

He runs blindly, deciding it’s too risky to go back for the stairs and skids around the corner, sneakers squealing horribly on the polished floor, before finding himself in The Vulture’s living room.

It’s grotesquely decorated, and honestly just looks as though a taxidermist threw up in there, but there’s no time to dwell on that (or the dozens of stuffed animals staring blankly at him).

Jake hauls a chair into the air, sweating profusely by this time (it’s heavy!) and staggers over to the arched window.

As his pursuers skid into the room, he lunges at the glass; it’s resilient at first, but on his second swing it shatters, and Jake is through the pane and pelting across the grass as though his life depends on it.

He dives into a bush by the side of Pembroke’s apartment and tries to contain his haggard breaths in his hand, viscerally conscious of the sweat trickling behind his ear. Soon enough, he hears the heavy crunch of the guards’ boots on the grass.

‘Damn it, Terry, I _told _you I heard something. Maybe if you hadn’t been trying to set me up with all your weird losers we wouldn’t be in this situation right now.’

‘I’m sorry, okay! Terry just wants to see his friends happy. You’ve not been yourself since you broke up with Pimento.’

‘I’ve been _fine_, just because I don’t feel like smiling ten times a day doesn’t mean I’m not myself. I’m just fed up of this working for this dumbass. I’m glad somebody tried to rob him.’

‘Diaz.’ the dude’s tone is stern. ‘He’s our boss. I know you hate the guy-’

‘Pfft. Hate him? I want to rip his intestine out and wrap it round his neck so tight he chokes on his own heart. I want to cut his tongue off and shove it up-’

‘Alright, alright, I get it, you want to do unspeakable and _very illegal _things to him.’ Jake can practically hear the guy shaking his head in exasperation. ‘But it remains that he’s our boss and we have a job to do, so we’re gonna have to report this. Even if it means our heads.’

‘Well, those dum-dums have scarpered. I’m going home. Gonna drink a beer and smash something. I’ll be back before Pembroke’s in town again.’

Their voices dwindle into obscurity: Jake huffs a sigh of relief and begins to clamber out of the bush, brushing twigs and stray insects from his shoulders with a shudder.

‘Did you really have to steal my hiding place, too?’

Jake just about jumps out of his skin as Dora emerges, clothes a little grimy but otherwise no worse for wear, from the depths of the same bush.

‘Could you – stop doing that!’ he exclaims.

‘You’re in the wrong profession if you get startled so easily,’ she says, pouting when she runs nimble fingers through her hair and realises it’s in disarray.

‘Well, if you hadn’t insisted on giving me the entire history of art back there, maybe we wouldn’t have left empty-handed.’

‘Who says I left empty-handed?’ she says, and Jake gawps as she reaches into her rucksack and pulls out a gaudy gold ornament. ‘Grabbed it on my way out.’

‘I smashed three windows to escape, without even breaking a sweat.’ Jake says, once again seized by the childish need to one-up her. ‘Double-glazed glass.’

‘Glass, who gives a shit about glass?’ Dora says, and Jake lets out a theatrical gasp.

‘Whoa, whoa, hold up. D-Did you just quote Die Hard?’ her expression remains stoic, but Jake doesn’t care, he’s so excited, because yeah he hates her on principle and everything, but c’mon, _Die Hard!_

‘Hang on.’ he says, holding a finger up contemplatively. ‘You’re just trying to distract me with awesome John McClane references so you can sneak back inside and open the vault.’

‘We literally just escaped by the skin of our teeth, there’s no way I’m going back in there without a fully fool-proof plan,’ Dora shakes her head, ‘but I don’t need to distract you because I thought we’d established that this is _my _heist.’

Jake opens his mouth to argue, but the mulish way Dora’s chin is set makes him reconsider.

‘How about we settle this once and for all?’ he says, and his chest tightens a little at the way her eyes light up. He has the flickering desire to see the rest of her face, what might frame those eyes, but then her foot taps a restless tattoo and it’s gone.

‘I’m thinking a bet. A crazy-ass bet.’

‘What are the terms?’ Dora says, and frankly Jake wouldn’t be surprised if she demanded ten pages of small print.

‘Whoever gets the highest score takes free reign over Brooklyn. Loser moves on, somewhere else. We’re including taking down criminals _and _successful heists.’

‘Deal.’ she sticks a hand out, and Jake nearly yelps at her bone-crushing handshake.

‘Wow, steady hand,’ he says, rubbing his wrist as he withdraws it.

‘They don’t call me the Finger Queen for nothing, you know.’ she says, before faltering. Jake wonders what she looks like when she’s blushing. ‘I – that isn’t as dirty as it sounds.’

‘Wow, keep the dirty talk to yourself,’ Jake snorts, ‘trying to seduce me isn’t going to help you win this bet.’

She doesn’t respond, but he’s almost _positive _there’s the hint of a smile behind that mask.

x

Amy has to admit, being a criminal vigilante is really not all it’s cracked up to be.

She was sweetened to it for years by the cynical grumblings of her brother David – incidentally, a police sergeant – on how easy his perps have it, on how the cocaine dealers he spends hours at a time tracking have nicer apartments than he does.

Part of her, she knows on some dark, subconscious level, stepped into this career if only to spite him.

More than that, though, she just became disillusioned with the justice system as it stands.

With seven immediate family members on the force, she was raised on bedtime stories of heinous criminals who narrowly escaped capture. As she got older, and her perception sharpened, she unravelled those stories to reveal the cold, hard truth: that sometimes, it all comes down to money and power.

So that’s what ‘Dora’ takes to the streets to combat. One disgusting pervert at a time.

It’s unexpectedly fulfilling, when she sidles past the coffee cart outside the eighty-second precinct and hears the beat cops mumbling about how some pantsuit-clad hotshot is doing more to minimise petty street crime than their superiors.

On the other hand, it’s lonely, living a double-life. Her family think she dropped out of the police academy to become a curator at an art museum, and it’s only a half-lie, because she _does _work at the Brooklyn Museum, and she _does _know her Matisse from her Pollock.

But she also knows how to take down a grimy mugger on the run with one carefully positioned leg.

Now, though, her routine of meticulous patrols and sneaking titbits of information from David’s rants over the monthly Santiago family dinners has been disrupted. It’s a system that’s been working perfectly for years; her brothers mention some scumbag that’s slipped through the cracks; Amy nods sympathetically over her wine, and a couple of days later she’s plotting ways to make him or her pay.

Until _he _came into the picture.

‘Johnny’. She doesn’t know his real name, she doesn’t really want to, because that’s when this all stops being a game, but that doesn’t stop her from lying awake, tasting different names on her tongue, wondering which one might denote that crooked half-smile and shock of soft curls that somehow always spill out from beneath whatever ridiculous disguise he’s donning.

She’s been torn between admiring him and despising him for years; she didn’t leave a promising career in law enforcement behind to avoid living in the shadow of one overbearing overachiever only to find herself futilely struggling to come out on top against another.

Because Amy ‘Dora’ Santiago has finally become the golden girl. David’s rants about ‘puffed-up, short-sighted, arrogant vigilantes’ are a lot less generic and a lot more direct these days. The first time he mentioned ‘Dora’, at a family dinner, Amy smiled so wide that he took the opportunity to point out two cavities at the back of her mouth.

And she’s not prepared to share that title with anyone.

Since the bet, though, Amy’s had to concede that her casual heisting has become a lot less ‘casual’ and a lot more like a competition; and Amy _lives _for competition.

In the spirit of taking no prisoners, she’s swapped out the chunky boots for sensible flats, switched from cascading tabs to the regular ones to lighten up her heist binders, and her stress-smoking has pretty much petered out because her nicotine cravings have been supplanted by the purely primal need to _beat him._

And at first, that’s exactly how it goes.

Amy takes the lead, nabbing three old perverts she’s had her eye on since spotting them lurking at the museum. But then Johnny manages to trick some repeat offender for jewellery theft into giving him a full confession on tape (‘remember: credit to your old friend Joke. That’s J-O-K-’) along with his four accomplices.

They’ve been keeping track of the final score on their text thread. _Amy _wanted, for the purposes of efficiency and anonymity, to use an encrypted app. Johnny had other ideas and suggested spray-painting the tally on The Vulture’s garage door. They finally settled on exchanging numbers, although this has proven to be a big mistake.

Initially, they keep it short and sweet: just updates on their latest triumphs, maybe a little barb or humble brag tagged on the end.

But then Johnny starts giving her live updates of his heists, as though daring her to try and upstage him. And he likes using GIFs. And emojis. A lot. Granted, most of them are vaguely mocking, but she has to smile when he inadvertently undercuts the glory of his latest victory with a dancing Tigger animation.

Amy tries to maintain the brevity – keep it professional, she chides herself – but she can’t deny that treacherous little squeeze of her heart when she’s bored on a stakeout of some creep’s hideout and her burner phone pings.

A couple of weeks in, and it gets personal. When she somersaults into the target’s kitchen through a broken cat-flap and sees a note stuck to the hollow space where a very valuable piece of art used to hang, she nearly combusts on the spot (‘lol 2 late, u snooze u LOSE, ok byeeee’).

In turn, it takes her two hours longer than usual to fall asleep a couple of nights later, just imagining the dumbfounded look on Johnny’s face when he breaks into the corrupt senator’s penthouse and sees the safe hanging open, her dulcet ‘sorry for your loss’ note tucked inside.

Amy writes her notes on notepaper monogrammed with Dora’s initials. Johnny writes his on ink-smudged scraps of paper that smell faintly of gummy bears.

It’s different, but it’s the same. It’s a thin line that’s blurring right before her eyes.

x

Jake’s never been this out of breath in his life.

Okay, so he eats a generous amount of fruit roll-ups and he’s not great about going to the gym weekly (or at all, really). But he’s pretty trim and fit for a guy who calls mayo-nut spoonsies a proper meal.

Except chasing the so-called ‘Caveman’ – a thief whose modus operandi is bludgeoning his victims with a wooden bat, not hard enough to kill, but enough to knock them out whilst he empties their wallets– for eleven blocks is perhaps more strenuous activity than he’s used to and his _eyebrows _are sweating which is a new sensation he’s not particularly fond of-

‘Up by one, Johnny. Any last words for Brooklyn before you never see it again?’

One minute, he’s barrelling down 8th Street, leaving behind only incoherent string of profanities, the next, his vision’s obscured by a shiny black ponytail and small, fairy-hands are nudging him aside.

‘You!’ Jake shouts, as Dora angles her head back to flash him with a self-satisfied smile. ‘I got here first, so you can just-’

‘I don’t see your name on him, so he’s fair game,’ she yells back, ‘and after I catch this guy and drop him in my brother’s lap you’re done here.’

Jake doesn’t have time to press her on her clear family issues (and he’s no stranger to those) because she’s right, the bet ends in two weeks and if she gets the Caveman she’ll be one-up and Jake’s not sure he’ll have the confidence to keep going.

He tries to control his breathing, focus simply on his feet pounding against the pavement, but Dora’s hand is encroaching on the Caveman and he _can’t _let her win this one.

‘Hey! Police, freeze!’

Jake curses indistinctly as he casts a wary eye over his shoulder.

It’s Detective Boyle, fully clad in NYPD gear and brandishing his gun at them as he hastily spills out of his squad car.

The earnest, pie-faced officer has been officially ‘after’ Jake for years, but he hasn’t done a very good job of actually catching him. Funnily enough, he doesn’t try to hide his blatant hero-worship of ‘Johnny’, because he frequently commends his hair, his exit-lines, his disguises – well, just about everything Jake does, Detective Boyle has a compliment for.

And Jake’s pretty sure he once heard him, in conversation with a fellow officer, referring to the two of them as ‘best buds, practically’.

‘I said stop – wait – damn, my gun’s out of ammo!’ Boyle yelps, and Jake turns around again just in time to see the detective release his mag and attempt to drop-kick it a couple of metres ahead. It flies backwards and hits him in the butt; Boyle flails around, moaning in pain.

‘Uh-’ Jake blinks as he suppresses the urge to laugh, and resumes his pursuit of the Caveman only to come skidding to a halt three seconds later to avoid crashing headfirst into Dora, who’s standing over the fallen thief with her hands resting neatly on her hips.

‘Hey, come on.’ pants Jake. ‘I called him first.’

Dora gives a derisive snort. ‘Seriously? I caught him, so he’s mine, fair and square.’

‘Nuh-uh, because it isn’t fair and it isn’t square since you literally shoved me out of the way to get to him.’

‘I don’t have time for this.’ Dora says. She contemplates Jake for a moment, and he knows she’s made some sort of silent decision because she lowers her voice and steps closer to him. ‘I have a date tonight and it’s the first one I’ve had in ages, so if you could just back off, that would be great.’

‘Ooh, spilling the details of your steamy and sordid personal life, bringing out the big guns I see,’ Jake smirks, and she, as he knew she would, scowls, ‘but that’s not gonna wash with me because I happen to have a date tonight too. And the last girl I went out with was a defence attorney last month, so I definitely win this one.’

‘Yeah, well my last boyfriend was Sergeant Boring from the eighty-second precinct.’ Dora shudders. ‘And we went on three dates before I ended it. I had to go to a _jazz brunch _with him. I win by default.’

‘Ugh, you dated a police officer?’ Jake recoils, gasping his disdain out through bursts of laughter. ‘Wait – eighty-second…you’re not talking about the guy who spends his lunch hour looking at blueprints for different places in the city, right?’

Dora says nothing, but he can tell she’s grimacing behind the mask.

‘Man, you dated that guy?’ Jake’s eyes widen in disbelief as he cracks a stupendous grin. ‘I stole one of his blueprints once for a heist and I don’t think he ever got over it.’

Dora’s jaw drops. ‘That was _you? _ He spent our entire second date talking about how excited he was to go down to the city planner’s office and get a replacement made!’

‘You should be thankful, I’m probably saving you from another terrible date with a terrible bore.’ says Jake, dramatically.

‘A friend of mine is setting me up, actually.’

‘Ouch, blind date? Now that’s just asking for – actually, I don’t know why I’m saying that, my friend is setting me up as well.’

‘It seems we have a stalemate, then.’ Dora says, glancing down at the Caveman, who is still emitting animalistic grunts of pain as he lolls on the road.

‘Uh, maybe not so much.’ Jake coughs, and Dora follows his gaze to see Detective Boyle staggering towards them, gun lopsided in his hand, mouthing something along the lines of ‘you’re under arrest’.

‘Nobody counts this one, agreed?’ Dora’s feet are already poised to make a quick getaway; Jake nods his agreement and they take off in different directions, just as Boyle approaches and lunges for the incapacitated perp before him.

x

Jake makes it to the date restaurant only four minutes late, for which he gives himself a ‘self-five’ because given he had only twenty-five minutes to run home, scrub away the dirt and grime that comes with the territory of chasing criminals around Brooklyn, get changed and drive the fifteen minutes from his apartment to Bouche Manger, he was expecting this to be a half-an-hour blip at best, which would culminate in an early night and an extra-large burrito (his comfort food, don’t ask).

‘Hi, Jake Peralta,’ he says to the concierge, whose beady eyes rove him with palpable disapproval.

‘I have no bookings under that name, sir.’ the concierge deadpans, and Jake spends a fraught moment worrying he’s somehow ended up in the wrong place. ‘I do, however, have a booking under one Gina Linetti, for a Mr Peralta.’

‘That’s m-’

‘Ms Linetti requested that I should convey to you a message upon arrival.’

Jake braces himself.

‘Ahem. “Well done for making it on time, ‘pup’…ah-ha-ha-ha. Just kidding. Hope you weren’t too late because this one likes punctuality. Have fun and don’t forget the obligatory ice sculpture of me at your wedding.” That concludes the message.’

‘Thanks, Gina,’ Jake mutters.

‘Your company has been here for some time. Allow me to show you to your table.’

Jake makes a childish face behind his back but follows him without further comment.

She gets up to greet him, and the first thing his frazzled brain thinks is _wow, pretty_ because her hair is a sheen of spilled ink that curls languidly against her forearm, and her skin is a smooth olive that only softens under the candlelight, and her eyes are – well, her eyes are –

He’s jolted, although not unpleasantly, from his train of thought when she offers her hand; he shakes it awkwardly and for a moment rues Dora for nearly breaking all the bones in his own hand with her stupid ultra-firm handshake because why else would it hurt so much shaking this beautiful stranger’s –

‘I’m Amy. Santiago. Amy Santiago.’

x

She’s already forgotten the fifteen very uncomfortable minutes she spent alone at their table waiting for him to show up (alright, so she was ten minutes early, but that’s just common sense), she’s having such a good time.

Jake makes her laugh, that’s the first thing she notices about him, and the second is that as soon as he realises he’s able to do it with relative ease he _tangibly _starts trying to, whether it’s through his flawless impressions of the snotty maître d' or the witty teasing they both already feel comfortable with or his big ideas for a sixth Die Hard movie.

Admittedly, he’s a bit of a slob and managed to spill soup down himself five minutes into their date, and he has a mysterious scar on the pad of his fingertip which he got flustered about when she asked and seems proud of the fact that he hasn’t been to the dentist in seven years.

But he exudes warmth, this man before her, his eyes are the colour of a beautifully crafted espresso, rich and dark, and she wants to say she’s seen them before but she’d surely never forget eyes like that, not when they’re so gently tracing her face. And his smile, God, it’s sunshine, burning a hot flush across her cheeks every time he cracks it, and yes she’s had a couple of drinks by this point but Amy knows the blood thundering hot and stinging at the very surface of her skin has nothing to do with alcohol.

So why can’t she get Johnny’s voice out of her head?

‘So how do you have the pleasure of knowing Gina?’ she says, bringing herself back to the present, and Jake smiles reminiscently, setting down his wine glass and leaning back.

‘Childhood friends,’ he says, ‘she was basically my dad, growing up. We were pretty much Danny and Rusty from Ocean’s Eleven. Without, y’know, the uh, senseless crime.’

Amy swallows her twinge of panic and raises an eyebrow. ‘Somehow you strike me as more of a Home Alone duo…’

Jake grins. ‘That’s fine by me, as long as I get to be Kevin. That’s one badass kid. How awesome would it be if you got to single-handedly defend your house from burglars with a bunch of pranks?’

‘Not my house,’ says Amy, ‘I have seven brothers and a dad, all on the force.’

‘Really?’ Jake visibly pales, stuttering a little as he takes a hasty gulp of wine. ‘Cool cool cool cool cool, your whole family are police, definitely nothing illegal going on here.’

‘You – uh – you’re not police, are you?’ he says in a dismal attempt at nonchalance. Amy supposes he’s got a bunch of unpaid parking tickets or something – he seems like the type – and shakes her head. If only he knew.

‘No, I’m a curator at Brooklyn Museum. I love art.’ she says, and it doesn’t matter if it’s a little strained because Jake doesn’t seem to notice anyhow, still murmuring ‘cool’ repeatedly under his breath.

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a barista at the Two Daughters coffee joint over on Seventh Avenue.’ says Jake, and hesitates. ‘Oh – I – I also have a small business. Wealth management. Redistribution. That kind of stuff. I’m the only partner.’

‘That must be difficult.’ Amy looks down at her napkin. ‘Managing alone, I mean.’

‘Yeah, sometimes.’ she meets Jake’s eyes, and his eyes are narrowed, jaw clenched. ‘There’s this real...jerk…who keeps trying to steal my business. I guess you could say it’s practically criminal.’

‘Really?’ Amy perks up. She can absolutely relate to this.

‘Yeah. She’s come for a few of my clients now.’ Jake says, but oddly, he doesn’t sound bitter, she’s not even sure he’s capable of it. ‘The thing is, she’s really clever, you know? Like super intelligent. It’s not like she couldn’t go find her own.’

‘Maybe she likes messing with you.’ suggests Amy. Johnny certainly gets a kick out of rubbing his victories in her face, but her stomach still does backflips when she sees his name in her notifications.

She really needs to stop thinking about him, but it’s almost as though he’s in the restaurant with them. Ruining one of her dates is exactly the kind of dick-move he’d make.

‘Yeah, maybe. I think she hates me.’ Jake says, and he looks so sad in that moment that Amy has this inexplicable urge to track down this woman and give her the Dora treatment.

‘I don’t think anyone could hate you.’ she says, and for a fleeting second he gives her this soft smile she thinks she could get lost in but then he’s back to the crooked half-smile and adding, ‘You didn’t live below me when I was learning the Gangnam Style dance.’

She rolls her eyes, a knee-jerk defence mechanism to how easily he’s charming her, even with sauce smudged around the underside of his bottom lip.

Hey, maybe she’ll lick it off later.

x

**[23:14] From: Gina Linetti**

**So? Am I or am I not the greatest matchmaker this side of the universe??**

**[23:39] To: Gina Linetti**

**Okay. Jake is great. That was the best first date I’ve had since…ever**

**[23:40] From: Gina Linetti**

**Ugh amy do I sense a ‘but’ coming? did u guys at least hook up before he saw ur doily collection and ran a mile**

**[23:43] To: Gina Linetti**

**No!! Look, I just don’t think things will work out at the moment. I don’t want to start a relationship off that way. I don’t know what to do**

**[23:59] From: Gina Linetti**

**Amy, only 1 person can tell u what to do in this situation**

**[00:04] To: Gina Linetti**

**I know. Myself.**

**[00:04] From: Gina Linetti**

**What? No. Me. Gina Linetti. And I say u go on a second date w jake bc ur not gonna find a better guy than him**

**[00:05] To: Gina Linetti**

**I’m sorry Gina, I just don’t think it’s a good idea.**

**[00:10] To: Jake Peralta**

**Hey, I had an amazing time tonight. Are you free next week?**

**[00:11] From: Jake Peralta**

**For u? Very free. how’s saturday**

**[00:11] From: Jake Peralta**

**And i had a great time as well. super great. awesome.**

Amy texts him back an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to Saturday and tries not to panic.

The tang of his citrusy scent lingers faintly where he kissed her goodnight (on the cheek, she was too tense from the stress of hiding her double-life to let it escalate to anything else), and she falls asleep to a disturbing flurry of images from which Jake’s soft expression is the only thing she remembers when she wakes up.

x

Jake has made a brilliant new discovery.

Dora wears glasses. And they’re _hideous._

Okay, so he’s pretty sure she could still manage to look good in a clown suit or something (that’s not him saying she’s hot, okay? Alright, so maybe she’s really hot, but that doesn’t change the fact that Jake can’t stand her, so his point still stands) but the glasses are gigantic and take up half of her face and look so ridiculous on top of her mask that he can barely argue with her about whose heist this is without laughing.

‘The score is still tied, so whoever gets all this-’ Dora gestures to the art stacked haphazardly in the basement they’ve been arguing in for the past twenty minutes, ‘-should win.’

‘How are we gonna decide that?’ says Jake, folding his arms. In his pocket, his personal phone pings with a text – probably Gina demanding to know what’s going on with him and Amy – and Dora frowns.

‘Are you trying to get us caught?’

‘I forgot it was in there.’ Jake says. ‘Don’t try and distract me, because it can’t be d – hey, look at that sculpture, it’s a monkey humping a frog.’

There’s a sudden pounding of footsteps, and Dora jerks so violently that her glasses topple to the floor and one of the lenses pops out of the frame; she gives a little gasp of horror, but that’s nothing compared to the stilling of Jake’s heart when a guy in blue-stripe pyjamas with a police captain’s badge pinned to the breast pocket comes staggering down the stairs.

‘If this is it and we’re going to prison, please let me put your glasses on my penis first.’ Jake says quietly, covertly scanning the room for means of escape.

‘I don’t need to be able to see to break you in half, you know.’ Dora hisses, before the captain beams at them and they both freeze.

‘Oh, you must be here to check my water.’ he says, happily. ‘My boiler’s been making weird noises for about two years now, haha!’

‘Check your…water?’ Dora repeats, slowly.

‘Yeah, I called yesterday, but I thought you said I’d got the wrong number and that the commissioner’s office doesn’t deal with dodgy boilers, so thanks for coming out anyway. Nice to meet you, I’m CJ.’

Dora’s still gaping at him, so Jake, despite his confusion at this bizarre turn of events, hurries forward and obediently returns CJ’s high-five.

‘Um, what’s a police captain doing with a bunch of stolen art?’ Dora says, eventually, and CJ blinks at her.

‘Stolen? No, my friend asked me to hold this for him. Quite the collection, eh? But he’s trying to put together a surprise for his wife, so I’m not supposed to tell anyone about it.’ CJ says bemusedly. ‘He’s keeping it on loan for some public galleries or something. I keep it down here so I don’t lose it. That’s why I sleep with my badge on, too.’

‘Which friend would this be?’ says Dora, mouth set in a firm line.

‘Oh, uh, Keith!’ CJ exclaims. ‘Keith Pembroke. He’s a great guy, you know. Even said if anyone asks I can say all this art is mine. Insisted on it, actually. Imagine being that generous.’

Jake exchanges a glance with Dora, before he closes his eyes and buries his face in his palms.

‘So uh, do you need me to like…stay, or can I go back to bed? I try to get ten hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. Apparently I run a precinct or whatever.’ CJ yawns.

‘When was the last time you spoke to The Vult – I mean, Keith?’ says Dora, eyes darting between Jake and CJ.

‘Oh, he’s going away on business tonight.’ says CJ, with an oblivious smile. ‘He told me not to contact him under any circumstances. Well, I’ll go back to bed. Hey – try not to wake me up when you leave. Don’t shut the front door or anything.’

With that, he turns and slopes back upstairs, blissfully ignorant to the devious grins of his guests.

‘Shotgun on The Vulture!’ Jake shouts, as soon as CJ’s out of earshot.

‘You can’t call shotgun on robbing somebody’s house!’ Dora snaps, her eyes flashing, and it’s then that Jake remembers he’s supposed to be going on his second date with Amy tonight. In two hours, actually.

He’s been looking forward to it all week, he doesn’t understand how it managed to slip his mind so easily, but Dora just does something to him that makes all rational thought scatter.

So does Amy, as a matter of fact. Their entire first date, he was positively _glowing_, laughing and joking and chatting with her with uninhibited enthusiasm. And when he kissed her at the end of the night – only the cheek, he would have gone for more, he _wanted _to go for more, but he could tell she was nervous and he’d already rather cut his arm off than fuck this up.

He really, really doesn’t want to cancel, but this is _The Vulture, _and his last attempt was such a disaster, and he just can’t let Dora win their bet because there is absolutely no way he’s just going to give her Brooklyn.

Dora’s pulling her phone out – probably making plans to beat him already – so reluctantly he retrieves his personal phone from his pocket and crafts a text to Amy.

**[18:02] To: Amy Santiago**

**Hey im so sorry but I have to cancel 2nite, somethings come up at work. id much rather be going out w u. can we reschedule?**

He sighs, and presses send.

And two things happen.

Firstly, the phone in Dora’s hand buzzes. Secondly, the phone in Jake’s hand pings. Frowning, he glances down at the display screen and his heart just about fails.

**[18:02] From: Amy Santiago**

**Hey, Jake, I’m so sorry but I’m going to have to cancel our date tonight. Something last-minute came up at work. Sorry this is short notice. Are you free tomorrow night instead? x**

His head snaps up; Dora’s already staring back at him with a look of abject horror on her face he’s sure must mirror his own.

‘Amy?’ Jake splutters.

‘This isn’t happening.’ she says faintly, trailing her ponytail through her fingers. Since it doesn’t look like Dora (Amy??) is going to say anything beyond mutters of disbelief any time soon, Jake does what he always does in moments like this, and makes a joke.

‘So, seven brothers on the force, huh?’

She pulls off her mask, and if his breath momentarily hitches in his throat it’s only because he’s surprised, he tells you, but Amy being Dora and Dora being Amy is possibly the best and worst thing that could have happened to Jake today-

‘I should have known it was you,’ Amy shakes her head, ‘how many people actually use the expression “bingpot”?’

‘Yeah, and how many people only use that one GIF of Michael Jackson eating popcorn.’ Jake mutters.

‘It works for a variety of situations!’ says Amy, but she’s edging towards the doorframe, , barely managing to keep her eyes locked on Jake.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ he warns her.

‘What?’ she says, innocently. ‘Hey, is that a sculpture of a monkey humping a _bear?’_

Jake scoffs. ‘That’s-’

But she’s squeezing past him and hurtling up the stairs before he can even finish his sentence.

x

Amy has nobody but herself to blame.

Of _course _Johnny is Jake. The goofy smile, the uncontrollable need to pepper every conversation with jokes, the way he looks at her whether she’s Amy or Dora –

She’s quiet as she presses a tentative foot on the grass denoting the front of The Vulture’s property. No alarm sounds. No guards converge on her. The only sound is her heart thumping erratically in her chest. There’s a disturbing finality to each beat.

Her baton blasts through the side-door easily, and Amy slips inside with the assurance that the motion-detectors are set to come online at ten ‘o’ clock every evening and so she’s got an entire, free hour to scour Pembroke’s house.

But even less time until Jake turns up.

Amy heads straight for the vault. The ruined portrait of Pembroke has gone, and surprisingly, there’s nothing in its place, so the vault is fully exposed when she walks into the room.

She makes quick work of the code combination, plugging in her safe-cracking device and feeling the tension drain from her shoulders as she’s enveloped in the wonderful familiarity of numbers. Numbers are certain. They don’t pretend to be something they’re not. They don’t – well they don’t -

‘Amy.’

‘It’s Dora.’ she says harshly, and she doesn’t turn around because she can’t bear to see any hurt expression on his face, not knowing that she put it there.

‘The Vulture’s car is parked just down the road.’ says Jake. ‘I think this is a setup – I have a bad feeling about this.’

‘You just want to win the bet.’ says Amy, accusingly, and Jake sucks his teeth noisily, shaking his head in frustration.

‘Just – just forget the stupid bet for a minute, okay?’ he says, almost angrily. ‘I don’t even care about the bet any more. Not since I found out…you know.’

She does know.

‘We should get out of here,’ Jake says, and when he reaches his hand out for her, she freezes. She can't help but feel as though some indiscernible line will be crossed if she takes it.

Her hand is twitching at her side when the guards burst in. It’s the same two from last time, and frankly, Amy’s getting tired of the constant déjà vu.

‘You two, up against the wall.’ the man says, exasperatedly, and Amy’s weighing the pros and cons of grabbing Jake’s hand and making a mad dash for the door when the other guard steps forward, arms crossed.

‘You know what, Terry, I reckon we must have just imagined seeing two people break in.’ she says, with a raspy cough.

‘Diaz-’

‘And if those imaginary people had any sense, they’d get out of here right now, because Pembroke’s on his way over and the moron’s got an entourage of cops behind him.’

There’s a pregnant moment where Terry and Diaz glare at one another unblinkingly. There appears to be some sort of silent argument going on between them, before Terry holds his hands up in apparent defeat.

Amy catches Rosa’s eye; she nods. It’s ever so slight, but it’s unmistakeable. She doesn’t bother to see if Jake caught it too before she’s snatching his hand up and yanking him out of the door, hard.

And that’s when everything falls apart.

‘Hey – stop them!’

There’s no mistaking that voice; oily, even in anger, and it sends a cold ripple of shivers up Amy’s back.

‘The Vulture,’ Jake hisses, letting her pull him cloddishly around the corner, ‘let’s go through the back, I know a shortcut that’ll take us onto Fulton Street.’

He tightens his grip on her hand and takes the lead, and it’s as they’re tearing through endless rooms, each more gaudily decorated than the last, that Amy wonders when everything shifted, when she stopped being a rival and he started caring, when he had reason to clutch her hand and show no indication of letting it go.

She follows Jake through the kitchen door and across the lawn, down a stretch of pavement, and then he suddenly ducks a sharp right and she ends up pinioned against a dingy wall, and he’s standing right in front of her, and his breath grazes her cheeks, cresting them with a delicate pink flush.

‘I think we lost them.’ Jake says breathily, and his eyes glint strangely as the moonlight, mellow in the early evening, illuminates the tips of his curls. He’s beautiful, Amy thinks, and she doesn’t even hate herself for it, how can she? How can she hate how he’s making her feel? How can she hate the delicate way his chest is rising and falling against her own?

‘We should probably go.’ says Amy, aware that his hand is still entangled in hers and his eyes haven’t left her face.

‘Yeah, we should.’

He sounds firm, but his eyes tell a different story, because they drift down until he’s looking at her mouth and she can feel the goose-bumps prickling across her forearms, and his lips are ever so gently parted.

She doesn’t know which of them moves first, perhaps it’s simultaneous, but then his lips are on hers and he’s devouring her, each kiss hungrier than the last; what begins as mild and primitive, like the brush of butterfly wings, very quickly becomes rough and promising. He tastes vaguely sweet, but there’s a tang to his kiss that sears through her bloodstream.

There’s a rising sense of panic in her throat, a warning, she knows something’s wrong, but she doesn’t have the presence of mind to tear away from him. Not when he shifts one hand so that it’s resting on the wall above her head and the other caresses her waist as he leans into her.

He abruptly pulls away, she whimpers at the loss of contact, but he’s searching her face. There’s a vulnerability there that she’s never seen before, so she answers his unspoken question by tugging him back towards her, and when he sucks her tongue into his mouth they both release a soft groan.

‘Hey, Thelma and Louise. Get away from each other and put your hands in the air.’

Jake releases her so suddenly that her head nearly thumps against the wall, but he manages to grab her waist in time for her to regain her composure. Well, mostly. She’s still staring into the faces of The Vulture, Terry, Rosa, and about three cops with her mouth agape in a goldfish-like manner.

The Vulture starts crowing, and the beat cops are advancing with their guns drawn, handcuffs dangling from eager hands, and Jake’s trembling beside her, with fear or adrenaline she’s not certain, but she does know that they have a very small window in which running away is an option.

They’re still a good ten feet away.

‘Jake, we need to go,’ she says, and he seems to finally break out of his reverie and nods. They’re on the move, she can see the end of the alleyway in sight –

‘You god-damn fools, they’re getting away _again_. Diaz, give me your-’

There’s the blast of a gunshot, the bitter choke of gunpowder, a scream. Jake’s not beside her any more.

He’s splayed on the ground, face contorted in agony, hand violently shaking where it rests on his leg. Blood is pouring from the torn skin. Amy sways on her feet but she manages to crouch down beside him.

‘Jake – come on, get up, we have to get out of here.’

‘Just leave me –’

‘No way, you’re not getting out of the bet that easily.’ she wants to kick herself as soon as she’s said it, but he manages a weak smile, and then he’s staggering uneasily to his feet, crying out in pain, but standing all the same. His face is damp and pallid, so far gone from the warm, flushed skin she cradled in her hands only minutes ago.

‘Come on,’ Amy urges. Just a little further. The Vulture’s on their tail. Just a little further and they’ll be okay. Just a little further.

x

When Jake regains consciousness, his first thought is that he doesn’t remember his apartment ever being this tidy.

Which naturally leads him to the conclusion that he is in fact, not in his own apartment.

He tries to move, but an explosion of pain in his left leg has him collapsing back into the couch he has no recollection of lying down on. There are bandages wound tightly around his calf, but an ominous dark patch has seeped through it, and he’s shaky with leftover adrenaline.

There’s also a wooziness which makes every thought feel simple and easy. This is both comforting and deeply disturbing; he’s sleepy, relatively pain-free unless he moves his leg, but still completely unawares as to how he got here.

The light, delicious blend of jasmine and Sicilian lemon hangs in the air. Jake knows that scent, he’s revelled in it whilst he fervently kissed its owner.

So. He’s in Amy’s apartment.

Before he can ponder too deeply about what that might mean, he hears the low hum of voices beyond the door and sure enough, there’s the click of a key in the lock and Amy bobs around the door, shortly followed by…a woman clad in variations of black, eyes viciously outlined in kohl.

‘Amy? Are you crazy? You brought a cop to your apartment?’ Jake tries to contain his gasp of pain when he sits up, startled, but fails. Amy grimaces, but the woman – Rosa, he thinks, is unfazed.

‘Not a cop, but I _did _do three years at medical school, so it’s thanks to me that you’re not sideways in a hospital bed with a bunch of cops waiting to cart you off to jail.’ she says shortly. ‘And you get _one _pass, because you tried to steal from Pembroke and that’s pretty cool.’

Despite himself, Jake grins.

‘And Santiago basically threatened me if I didn’t help you. She even revealed her identity to me.’

Amy glowers at Rosa, but Jake can’t help his stupidly wide grin, his entire face lighting up.

‘Aww, Amy, I didn’t know you cared.’ he teases, but he’s secretly thrilled by this revelation and not putting too much effort into hiding it.

‘I will shoot you in your other leg,’ Amy says, but she’s smiling too, albeit shyly.

‘That’s hot, but please don’t.’ says Jake, as he tries to move his injured leg again and the resulting aftershock nearly careens him off the couch.

‘Your alter-ego is already all over the news. Pembroke doesn’t waste any time.’ Rosa remarks, scanning her phone screen with a snort. ‘Wanted: Vigilante-slash-art thief who goes by the alias “Dora”. Damn, that’s a lot of money for your arrest.’

Amy practically snatches the phone out of Rosa’s hands, huffing a tiny sigh when she sees the picture. ‘You can’t even tell that’s me. The mask covers my face. I guess I should count myself lucky.’

‘What about me?’ says Jake hopefully.

‘Nah, no “Johnny” to speak of.’ Rosa glances over at him. ‘Maybe they think getting shot in the leg by some dude who’s not even police was punishment enough.’

‘Ha-ha.’ Jake scowls. He knows he should be glad that there’s no warrant out for his arrest, but it still stings a little that Amy’s all over Brooklyn news and there’s not even a measly mention of him.

‘You’re not seriously mad that I’m more wanted than you?’ he rubs his eyes and suddenly Amy’s standing before him, eyebrow cocked.

‘Did you just hear yourself? More _wanted_, Amy.’

‘There’s literally a bounty on my head, Jake. The Vulture’s offering five thousand dollars for Dora’s arrest.’

‘Yeah, what a joke,’ Jake mutters, oblivious to the affronted look on Amy’s face. ‘Have they met you? You’re a million dollar criminal at least.’

Rosa makes a disgusted noise from somewhere behind him. ‘You really have no filter on painkillers, huh?’

Jake doesn’t care though, because Amy’s entire posture has softened considerably. She’s moved even closer to him in the last few seconds without him realising, and he can’t help but recall the firm pressure of her mouth, hot and wanting, against his.

‘Well, I guess I’ll come back later to change the dressing.’ says Rosa, slinging a large black bag over her shoulder. ‘Unless Santiago wants to have a go at playing nurse, that is. Just sling a sock over the doorknob, alright?’

Jake snorts, but Amy’s face reddens instantly and she’s looking anywhere but at him.

Rosa smirks; as soon as the door bangs shut behind her Amy leaps up and from the sloshing of water and clink of china he guesses she’s busying herself in the kitchen.

‘Thanks for not leaving me in that alley.’ he says eventually. He can’t see her face from this angle, but she reappears before him a few moments later, holding two mugs of tea, and there’s an unreadable expression on her face.

‘That’s okay.’ Amy says, with a wry smile. ‘You were right about it being a set-up. Maybe if I’d listened to you earlier you wouldn’t have been…shot.’ she takes a mouthful of tea and swallows, hard. Jake can see her throat muscles constricting.

‘It’s not your fault.’ Jake says, firmly, because it isn’t and he absolutely can’t stand seeing that despondent look on her face, it _tears _at him. ‘Maybe I’ll get a cool scar from it. I always wanted one.’

Amy’s nose scrunches up, and it’s kind of really adorable, but then Jake thinks back to their first date, and he’s confronted with the myriad of ways she made him feel in only a matter of hours; of the way her hands slowly gravitated from her lap to rest in his across the table; the way her lipstick smeared her wine glass and she was talking too animatedly to notice; the bells of her laughter at the end of every joke.

‘We should probably talk about…the alley.’ he says, because he’s always worn his heart on his sleeve, and this is Amy and they’ve kissed now. There’s no going back from that, not for Jake. He’s so far gone it’s almost shameful.

She inhales. ‘Yeah. Look, Jake…I think that-’

‘It’s fine,’ he interrupts, because he knows where this is going. He’s been here before, the tentative pauses that in no way soften the incoming blow, the inevitability of an aching heart. ‘We were hopped up on adrenaline and…yeah.’

There’s a tiny chasm in reality where he imagines her face falls, but then she’s clearing her throat loudly and saying, ‘okay, so I guess we’re on the same page.’

‘Yep, totally.’ Jake says, setting down his tea.

So that’s that, then. Everything can go back to normal.

x

At Amy’s request, Rosa brings Terry over a couple of hours later and together they load Jake into his minivan and take him home. Rosa eyes him suspiciously in the rear-view mirror but says nothing other than that she’ll be round a couple of times in the next week to check his wound.

Instead of relief, Jake feels resoundingly empty when he hobbles back into his apartment. The thought of resuming the old cat-and-mouse pattern now leaves a bad taste in his mouth. At any rate, he’s in no fit condition to be any time soon, so it looks like he’ll be picking up more shifts at the coffeehouse to make ends meet.

He sends at least half of whatever he makes from heisting to his mother. Somehow, it never feels like enough.

A laugh filters in from an open window in his kitchenette and he has to tell himself it’s not her, not to limp over and check, not to break his own heart.

But it doesn’t change.

Over the next week, he keeps having these thoughts; he lies awake sometimes, when the loneliness is so heavy it lingers in the back of his throat, and thinks he can hear the faint rasp in her voice when she’s laughing. His subconscious is unapologetically cruel.

x

The silvery chime of the shop bells bring her back to reality, but she steps inside anyway. She knows, somewhere in her mind, that there’s no going back from here. But she’s made her choice.

‘Hi,’ she says uncertainly to the redheaded woman behind the counter, taking repose in her friendly countenance. ‘I – is Jake working today?’

‘He sure is,’ the woman says. ‘Hey, Jakey, there’s a customer here for you.’ she calls, and Amy’s momentarily seized by a flutter of nerves in her stomach, but that dissipates almost immediately when Jake materialises at the door to the right of the counter. ‘Thanks, Genevieve, who-?’

He stops short when he sees Amy.

‘Hey,’ she says. ‘Can we talk?’

‘Uh – yeah – yes. Definitely.’ Jake glances at Genevieve. ‘Let’s –’

‘The storeroom is empty.’ Genevieve says, neutrally enough, but Amy catches the way Jake narrows his eyes at her.

‘Yeah, we can talk in there.’ he says. ‘C’mon.’

Amy follows him silently through the door and is instantly hit with the earthy smell of fresh coffee grounds; it’s a familiar solace, like the first taste of a latte in the morning, so when Jake turns around and watches her with anxious eyes she doesn’t flounder.

‘I’ve been at home this entire week,’ she starts, willing herself not to break eye contact, ‘and I’ve really wanted to talk to someone about this…us…and The Vulture and you getting shot, and then I realised…the only person I want to talk about that stuff with is you.’

The ghost of a smile flutters at Jake’s lips.

‘I shouldn’t have pretended I was okay with everything going back to how it was before. I’m not. I want this. I want _you_.’

‘Amy,’ Jake says, grinning broadly as he steps closer and entangles one of her hands in his, and _oh, _she knows where this is going. ‘Are you saying you want to be romantic-stylez with me?’

‘Only if it’s “stylez” with a z.’ she says, and she only has a second to appreciate the way his pupils dilate and breath shortens because then he’s slamming her against the nearest cabinet, one hand automatically tucked beneath her head, fingertips intertwined with strands of her hair.

She’s suddenly assaulted by a dusting of coffee grounds from above, but that’s the last thing on her mind because he’s nipping and gently sucking at the edge of her lip and one of his hands is meandering by the end of her blouse. She encourages him by sliding her own hand underneath the strings of his apron and scraping her nails across the jutting bone of his hip, forcing a groan from him as he slides his tongue inside her mouth.

‘Been – thinking about this since – the alley-’ he mumbles between kisses. ‘Missed you.’

His raw honesty – something that permeates Jake at every level, whether he’s himself or Johnny, and something she’s inexorably attracted to – only emboldens her, and she trails her hand across the soft curve of his cheek before, a thumb pressed to his jawline, pulling him even closer to her and revelling in the gusty sigh he gives at the contact.

‘Me too.’ she admits.

When he attacks her neck, the gentle shock of his teeth grazing the sensitive skin makes her hips roll against him, and they both whine at the sudden friction. She closes her eyes and exhales when she feels him, hard and insistent, against her leg, but the sensation is enough to recall all her ordinary reservations about public displays of affection - and this is so far gone from that. He senses her hesitation and pulls away immediately, hands ghosting her waist, mouth a little ajar and swollen red, just how she likes him. She can feel his heart, wild and throbbing in his chest.

‘We can’t have sex at your workplace.’ she says, trying to steady the pace of her own hummingbird heartbeat. ‘Anyone could come in.’

‘Yeah, yeah you’re right.’ Jake says, trying to catch his breath. ‘So…’

‘So?’

‘I have a break in ten minutes.’

‘Meet me at your place.’

x

Afterwards, when Jake rolls off her, leg twitching with minor discomfort, and makes a stupid sextape joke, Amy huffs a laugh and wriggles so that his left arm is cushioning her head, and turns to press a chaste kiss to his cheek.

He smiles into the pale light. ‘I’m _so _late for the rest of my shift.’

‘Jake!’ Amy springs up so that she’s leaning against the headboard. ‘You can’t just abandon work!’

‘You didn’t have a problem with it five minutes ago-’

She swats him on the chest, hand damp with the sweat cooling there. ‘I didn’t know what the time was. Get dressed.’

‘Aw, but babe-’

She melts at the nickname but dearly hopes this doesn’t undercut the graveness of her tone. ‘Come on. I’ll come back with you and sit in the corner. I have planning to do.’

‘Work?’ Jake looks horrified, but he slings himself out of bed and pulls on his jeans anyhow.

‘Not unless you count planning our second date as work,’ she shrugs, laughing when he comes up behind her and wraps his bare arms around her, peppering kisses along her shoulder, and she _knows _he’s got the biggest smile on that beautiful face and she really, truly, hasn’t felt this happy in a long time.

x

Somehow, not much really changes when they start officially dating, other than their Facebook statuses and contact names in their phones. Jake claims it’s because Johnny and Dora were basically already dating, even before she cornered him in that alley, for which he gets an eye-roll and a kiss.

They still compete to catch more criminals or heist more art, and there’s always a note waiting for the loser, but the tone has, inevitably, changed.

_HAHA LOSER i beat u also dinner tonight at mine, don’t be late im making perogies (love u)_

_Nice try, Johnny! Looks like it’s Training Day tonight and Die Hard goes back into storage for another week (I’ll be waiting at yours with two slices of Tony’s) xx_

_oh hey, did u break the code in under 5 seconds? that’s so fucking hot dora_

It might be childish. It might be distracting. But it’s them.

x

‘This has got to be the worst date idea ever.’

‘What? I was trying to be romantic!’

‘Dodging bullets isn’t romantic, Jake.’

‘Yeah, I love you too, now cover me, I bet I can shoot down that security cam in one-’

‘JAKE-’

**Author's Note:**

> and then when jake proposes to amy & they decide to settle down and live a non-dangerous life they become confidential informants through one of amy's brothers (not david) in exchange for immunity from prosecution and maybe start their own coffee/bookshop


End file.
